Roses, Burlap and Lace

 Cleaning out my cupboards.  That chore that I must do from time to time.  I get aggravated with myself when I get low on a spice and buy more only to find out that I have 4 bottles of it in back stock.  Suffice it to say, I am going to be cooking with cumin a lot in the near future.  We will have a lot of Mexican meals coming out of my cocina.   I have had cleaning the spice cabinet on my list of things to do for several weeks now, and today seemed like a good day.  I have read several books on organizing.  My issue is with the containers.  Professional organizers tend to use a lot of clear containers.  They all match, which is nice, but I have yet to find a place where I can buy them for less than $10 each.  If you multiply that by the number that I would need for home organization, it would amount to a small fortune.  So I have to stick with what I can find at the dollar store.  Unfortunately, with COVID so rampant...

I love my cat.  The litter box, not so much.  I had been looking in magazines for ideas on how to hide an unsightly litter box.  One person had built an end table with a litter box hidden inside.  Keeping a litter box in my living room where guests could see and hear my cat using it just didn't appeal to me.    When we bought our place, the former owners were moving out of the country and they left some of their furniture behind.   One of the pieces was this sad little table:   The drawer was all wonky and it is not very sturdy, but I knew it would be perfect for hiding my litter box in an elegant way in my bathroom:   I went to the fabric store and bought some white muslin and some light gray lace.    I used my serger to create a rolled edge around the muslin to finish it off.  I put the muslin on first and the lace on top.  Add a pitcher and bowl that my mother made and voila!     A side...

      We had been talking about moving for some time.  The Oklahoma summers became oppressive and dodging tornadoes and severe storms became tiresome.  Within a month my son and my husband both lost their jobs and when my hours were cut to 20 a week I knew it was time.  My daughter, SJ and her family, live in Oregon and  so it was decided that we would move to Oregon. It took us two months to go through 26 years worth of accumulation and decide what to take and what to get rid of in preparation of moving.  Then there was the packing.  I won't bore you with the hassles of finding a moving company.  Let's just say that if I had it to do over again, I would have transported everything myself.   I had never been to Oregon.  Like pioneers of old I was moving to an unseen place with hopes and dreams.  According to the "Emigrants Guide to Oregon and California" by Lansford Hastings (the official guidebook of the ill-fated Do...